shallows and raymarine ds500

[wayne_cook]

my 2 bobs worth.I'm happy with my ray. but I don,t use it in that shallow water.
I find the menu dead simple and easy.Plus it is easy to read in sunlight.

On a large site like this one, it would be hard to find a product that everyone would be happy with.
If my ray. packed it in tomorrow, it would be high on the shopping list again, considering the run and performance I have had from it, 5+ years and no problems touch wood.

[Wobbles13]

Sorry I am late on the post, probably made your mind already. We run both Raymarine Sounder and GPS since Xmas and am fairly happy with the capablity of both. However...

Can't guarantee accuracy in shallow water, but ours does read well down to about 1m then loses bottom track. I have to agree with previous post re looking for fish but each unto his own.

We had our 500 back to manufacturer within 1 month with what looked to be water, but can't understand as it never got wet. I believe it is a problem with LCD and heat! Get them out of heat and we seem to avoid the problem. Don't remember the explanation from Raymarine, but they replaced the screen within a week under warranty. Dealer was excellent.

Sorry to say thouhg that it appears to be happening again on the new screen to. As the weather gets warmer it gets worse. We'll wait to see what summer brings.

Funnily enough, the RC435i GPS is mounted 10 cm away and never missed a beat. Sounds like Raymarine may have quality issue in 500 series, but that is purely supposition.

As far as menus go, it does annoy me how the settings revert on startup. It appears some settings are maintained and others reset on startup. Can't advise which though. Haven't bothered to remember.

Hope this is of interest and assistance to someone. Will admit, do like the performance of both...gripes excepted.

[Barney_Rubble]

Hi Yort,
Sorry it took a while to get back to you. It is good to talk to someone who knows the problems with dirty water around the creek mouths in FNQ. You can look over the side all you want but you can't see sh... Do you know how the furuno 620 goes? in reguards to the shallows. I am a bit concerned about the power of the unit hoping it does not have the same problems as the raymarine.
Cheers Kev

[davez104]

I have the fcv620, if range is set to auto, it will read to 0.49M then it will start to search for the bottom. But if you set the range to manual and to show 0 - 2M it will show you the bottom to less than 35cm (thats where I bottomed out ) It wont actually give you a depth measurement under .49M but you can still see the bottom on the screen, if that makes sense.

Dave.

[Barney_Rubble]

Thanks Dave,
Great to hear from someone who actualy has done some shallow work, once i get some tracks into the creek mouths on the garmin 172c ,might also help to avoid some sandbanks .


CHEERS Kev

[davez104]

Great to hear from someone who actualy has done some shallow work,

Not intentionally, I can assure you. I know where there are few nice looking spots up toward the top of Fairbairn Dam, thought I would go for a looksee in my 17' Haines half cab The water had dropped a lot since I was last out there. A few wrong turns, a few close calls with rather shallow water and I eventually made it, good to find out how the Furuno went in the shallow stuff, I know a few people had been asking about it.

Dave.

[Spaniard_King]

I have the 620 as well and I run through some shallow stuff to gbet over a breaking bar.

I can tell you that my boat does not touch the bottom til 0.57m . The sounder works extremely well in the shallow stuff.. it has the new technology to support the suppressing of the big "BANG" double echo which sends sounder bonko in shallow water.

it trully is a great sounder, I think I now have it all sorted running manual gain and range for a quality picture.. and it even shows fish.. at least they look like fish

Garry

[julian1]

I have the Raymarine ds600x, i had a moisture problem in the screen, Oceantalk were fantastic (the major dealer I bought it from in Melbouren were terrible) they had the screen replaced and sent back within a week, only problem the next time I used it none of the buttons worked, sent it back agian and had a new unit shipped to me in a couple of days.
performance wise I reckon its better than the Furuno 620 I had in the last boat but i have never really worried about under 1m

[odyn]

I have a ds600 and I leave it on auto [ that is why raymarine went to the trouble to make these sounders so good] I only fish in water no more then 8 meters at the moment and it will read down to .8 of a meter and I have measured it and it is spot on.These sounders are much the same except for the size. I am very happy with mine but I havn`t had much time to fiddle with it in man.Had a slight moisture problem behind the screen when I left it in my boat one night in the rain but it went away after it was on for a while.